Sending emails through SMTP with PHPMailer

try port 25 instead of 456.

I got the same error when using port 456, and changing it to 25 worked for me.


As far as I can see everything is right with your code. Your error is:

SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.

Which means that the credentials you've sending are rejected by the SMTP server. Make sure the host, port, username and password are good.

If you want to use STARTTLS, try adding:

$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';

If you want to use SMTPS (SSL), try adding:

$mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl';

Keep in mind that:

  • Some SMTP servers can forbid connections from "outsiders".
  • Some SMTP servers don't support SSL (or TLS) connections.

Maybe this example can help (GMail secure SMTP).

[Source]


This may seem like a shot in the dark but make sure PHP has been complied with OpenSSL if SMTP requires SSL.

To check use phpinfo()

Hope it helps!


Try to send an e-mail through that SMTP server manually/from an interactive mailer (e.g. Mozilla Thunderbird). From the errors, it seems the server won't accept your credentials. Is that SMTP running on the port, or is it SSL+SMTP? You don't seem to be using secure connection in the code you've posted, and I'm not sure if PHPMailer actually supports SSL+SMTP.

(First result of googling your SMTP server's hostname: http://podpora.ebola.cz/idx.php/0/006/article/Strucny-technicky-popis-nastaveni-sluzeb.html seems to say "SMTPs mail sending: secure SSL connection,port: 465" . )

It looks like PHPMailer does support SSL; at least from this. So, you'll need to change this:

define('SMTP_SERVER', 'smtp.ebola.cz');

into this:

define('SMTP_SERVER', 'ssl://smtp.ebola.cz');